Life

Two Years Later

by Veronica Foale on February 27, 2010

in Life

The house is held together with baling twine and hope. We bought it with our fingers crossed, just looking for somewhere that we could call home.

It was a mess then.

**

When we moved in, it took 6 of us to remove the filth left behind.

I took on the bathroom with bleach and elbow length rubber gloves and I scraped and scrubbed until I could see the floor under the dirt. I wished for a hazmat suit the whole time.

Eventually it was liveable.

Eventually.

**

Nathan moves an old tank filled with bits of concrete to weigh it down.

Underneath he finds a stash, wrapped in decaying garbage bags, a hollow underneath the tank containing syringes and water. No drugs – although we’ve got no doubt they were here before.

We clean it up.

Like every other mess we’ve found, we don protective gear and get it over and done with.

You don’t want to know what we found in the old stables.

**

Nathan starts pulling out an old broken window.

I bounce next to him and make him pull out the frame as well.

It’s not enough; it’s never enough and I make him pull out the wall as well, talking grand ideas of laserlight and indoor greenhouses. Before he knows it I’ve convinced him to tear down the slats that enclose the BBQ area and we’re letting in the light, brushing away dirt and cobwebs and wondering why we didn’t do this sooner.

**

Later we sit, admiring our handiwork, looking up at the stars. Watching the night sky in front of us, the moonlight on the garden. The cool breeze floats through to the kitchen, a welcome addition on a summer night.

There is an awful lot of work left to do, but things cost money, something we are frequently short on. We tell ourselves that it won’t be forever and we plan our escape, how we’ll put this house on the market and buy something else.

But not yet.

For now, this place is home.

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Broken

by Veronica Foale on February 21, 2010

in Life, Me

I walk into my bedroom, picking up child detritus as I go; things pulled out of the cupboards and toys scattered about. Bending down next to my closet I breathe in and it’s her.

Eight months after she died, I can smell her perfume, like walking into her bedroom, like standing behind her while we prepared dinner, like holding her hand through the endless hospital visits.

The children playing have disturbed the last remnants of her, a few articles of clothing hung in the back of my closet. Her overcoat sits now, hiding in the dark.

I lean into the closet and bury my head in the sleeve. I breathe in, just for a moment, before steeling my shoulders and walking back out into the daylight and the chaos of my small children.

I sweep them up and twirl them around, all the while seeing her inside my head and remembering that last day. Remembering how it felt to pack up a hospital room and remove jewellery from her cold hands.

We are more for knowing her and less for losing her.

I am not better.

But I am coping.

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Gardening

by Veronica Foale on February 11, 2010

in Life

I  lay flat on my stomach, a weed mat protecting me from the muddy earth. In front of me a snail makes it’s way back towards my greenery; a terrible model, it won’t stay still.

Carefully I snap photos, even as I wish that we had chickens that I could feed them to. They’re decimating my cabbages, tens of them slithering over the purple heads together, a tiny snail army. Their task – to eat and procreate, an eternal circle of life. Unfortunate that my garden is at the centre of it.

It’s a war I’m not winning, as slowly the holes in the cabbage leaves get bigger and the capsicums and cauliflowers are more hole than leaf.

***

My tomatoes are growing. Faster and faster, like a snowball picking up speed down a great hill. I can’t keep up and instead I’m left, trying to contain the chaos and prevent immediate injury.

Carefully I tie branches higher and support the green fruit with more baling twine. I hammer stakes into the ground and twirl the stems around them. I kneel in the middle of the tomato jungle, getting wet and muddy as I baby the plants along, preventing catastrophe.

I emerge from the plants, hair tousled and smelling like tomatoes. I look like I’ve been in a fight, with leaves in my hair and dirt on my face.

But the tomatoes are up off the ground, away from the pillaging slugs and I can breathe easy about the safety of my plants.

At least until tomorrow when the my daughter and the puppy go crashing through the garden.

Again.

This photo displays about 1/8th of the amount of tomatoes I've got growing.

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Twelve Months

by Veronica Foale on February 7, 2010

in Life

Twelve months ago, we were glued to our television screens. Breathing shallowly we watched the flames race across Victoria, swallowing everything in their grasp.

The firestorm raged on

and on

and on.

We sat here, hundreds of kilometres away and cried as we listened to the body count rise; as they found more people dead. Dead in the streets, in their cars, in their houses. People who never had a chance, even as they ran from the flames.

The devastation unfolded before us and I’m not sure we comprehended it. Not entirely.

173 people dead. The worst bushfires ever.

Black Saturday they christened it, in the aftermath.

And I sit here and type while I listen to people on TV cry, twelve months later, and I remember. The faces of the broken and the grieving. The people at the community centres, waiting for word from family members who stayed behind.

I held my newborn son, and I stood in front of the TV, rocking backwards and forwards with his head tucked under my chin and I cried.

Twelve months on and we remember.

Oh how we remember.

We will never forget.

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Blocked

by Veronica Foale on January 30, 2010

in Children, Family, Life

Suck it up buttercup, I tell myself. You need to write, sit down and write it already. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or not, but you need to get over whatever this block is.

But I don’t want to. I’ve got nothing to write about, everything has been boring.

I don’t care. Just write.

Just write.

So I sit down and I just write and it’s not very good. And I poke at it and prod it and it’s still no good. I turn away, disheartened, and something inside screams that I need to keep writing and work through this block.

I’ve got all sorts of good ideas you see, but I pitched to a parenting magazine today and in the event of them wanting something from me, a minuscule chance, I don’t want to have used any good material.

Stupid, I know.

***

The baby turns into a toddler with the arriving of his birthday. He stands on his own two feet and steadily makes his way around the furniture. He pulls a toy table over to the kitchen gate and climbs on it. For a moment, he hangs in the balance, tall enough now to topple over and land on the kitchen floor.

Another moment passes and I’ve caught him, whisked him up into the air, alternately growling and cuddling him; my heart beating a little faster as I run through the what-ifs.

He screams as I put the table away. I’m not prepared for him to be climbing baby gates yet.

Instead, he climbs onto the coffee table and sits there, looking pleased with himself, bouncing and clapping.

At least the coffee table doesn’t wobble precariously.

***

The toddler turns into a preschooler, one who argues and has conversations with me, all in the same breath. She asks when we can go to school and when we can go and play on the slide. She wants to have a birthday every day and she sighs, visibly disappointed when I tell her that today is not a birthday.

She walks away in a huff, flipping her hair as she goes and I can almost see the shadow of a teenager hanging over her head, flouncing out and exclaiming that I’m ruining her life forever.

Not forever sweetheart. Just right now.

***

Everything is changing, slowly but surely.

Proof that life moves on, regardless.

It’s just past seven months since Nan died and inside, I can feel it, a ball of grief, hardened and immobile. If I ignore it, it doesn’t bother me, but poking it threatens to bring this whole house of cards toppling down on my head.

I wished I could ring her today, as my children screamed around me and the world spun while I reminded myself to breath. As I felt that familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach, that feeling of fear and dread and not knowing.

I wanted her here and there was nothing I could do about it.

So I did what I always do.

I ignored it.

I put the baby to bed, I cleaned out the horses water, I taught the puppy to sit. I fed the horses an extra slice of hay and I aimlessly clicked around the Internet. My son slept on and my daughter threw herself across my lap as I typed, watching the way my hands moved across the keys.

I breathed deep.

And I ignored it.

That’s probably not the best way to be dealing with the grief.

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